To Cross an Ocean Apognosis Chris Angelis 9781539116080 Books
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"Brilliantly engaging and authentic language"
"Hauntingly, beautifully written"
"A smooth work of literary fiction"
For Danny, a young American residing in Athens, Greece, life is all but an eternal present. Traumatized by the past and scared of the future, he leads an enigmatic existence sharing a rundown apartment with Yasir and Nazim, two illegal immigrants who try to continue their long journey to Germany. Danny’s best friend is Sophia, a young British-Greek woman that clearly desires more than a friendship.
The turning point comes when Danny’s roommates announce they have finally found a trafficker to get them out of Greece. Danny is now forced to acknowledge his past and face his fears, wondering whether it is too little too late.
To Cross an Ocean Apognosis Chris Angelis 9781539116080 Books
In Chris Angelis’s Apognosis, we meet Danny, an American eking out a meager living as an illegal immigrant Athens. Unlike Kurt Vonnegut’s Billy Pilgrim, Danny seems stuck in the present. Future prospects seem nil and his past yields up haunting, painful memories. It’s a present-day “lost generation" as he shares an apartment with two illegals trying to make their way to Germany. Danny’s simmering outrage “place[s] an enormous strain on his innate apathy...” such as when his girlfriend, Sophia, is being harassed by her boss.As Part One concludes, the narrator ponders the flaw in accepting Fate as the arbiter of life’s outcomes. While Danny feels past is prologue, Sophia presses him on his past asserting “I’ve come to realize without dealing with it, you won’t think about the future.” We get more insight as Danny tells a story to one of his roommates, Yasir, a staunch believer in fate (kismet). Back in the states Danny suffered the traumatic loss of a woman he loved very much. This certainly explains his reticence with Sophia, He simply refuses to be hurt again. His ocean crossing has indeed been one of despair.
Danny realizes that we can never escape the past. “it breathes with you, it feeds off you, it lives because of you.” At the outset, Danny seems little more than a detached member of a modern lost generation, getting by on hustling, but by Chapter 6 we see a committed altruistic side. It calls to mind Morris Berman’s “monastic option” from The Twilight of American Culture. At the point in the evolution of a civilization where collapse of empire is imminent, all we can do is carve out a little space and do something meaningful.
“Danny attempted to make sense of his condition. But, just perhaps, that was his error all along; to assume there was anything particularly his about all that he considered his life. Was his life not typical of all lives, of all stories, of all mundane paths people considered unique.” “In the greater scheme of things, all lives were about loss--or the struggle to avoid it....”
“The only way to lose nothing was to have nothing, that was the only reality available to him.” This is why he keeps Sophia at arm’s length, because he fears loss and abandonment, essentially a defense mechanism for self-preservation. Much later a friend provides a precise definition of apognosis: “In its truest ancient Greek, it means to voluntarily abandon knowledge...to shut yourself off.”
Near the end of Part 2, a tragedy unfolds and the causation is clear but the chain of events is absurd, leading one to conclude that the universe is at best indifferent and possibly even malevolent. If Danny and his friends had not gone for the knapsack....
After Part 2, there is a very brief transitional chapter (0) which is key to understanding the novel and Danny. Because of his earlier loss and experiences he believes himself emotionally broken. To some degree we have all been there one time or another.
In a flashback as Danny is about to embark as a stowaway to Greece he knows “although you can try to run away from ghosts, you really can’t. They’re always with you, because they live inside you.” The ship’s captain has an interesting take: “There is a hidden charm in punishing yourself...When life has thrown you enough woes, you begin to embrace them, so that you can’t be surprised anymore.”
Will Danny emerge from the slough of despair? The author keeps the reader in suspense. Whether Danny succeeds or not, whether or not the denouement satisfies the audience depends on the temperament of the reader. We may disagree, but as a narrative of deep self-examination, the writing is first-rate. Danny is by turns likable and unlikable, and thus a character of real-life complexity.
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To Cross an Ocean Apognosis Chris Angelis 9781539116080 Books Reviews
Sometimes a book falls into your lap that is just what you needed to read at that time. This book was that for me. I started it shortly after finishing the nonfiction book, "Moving Through Parallel Worlds." Maybe I am guilty of projecting what I learned from that book onto this one, but it seemed to me that "To Cross an Ocean" perfectly illustrates that we are creating our reality with our beliefs, and that we can shift into a different reality by just changing our perceptions of ourselves or of a situation. This is not a new concept but it is definitely a profound one. In the case of Danny, the main character in this book, his happiness solely relied on his ability to change his perception of himself. I wonder if the rest of us could greatly increase our happiness if we just worked at altering our perceptions. As for myself, I intend to find out. After all, the Universe went to all the trouble to send me two books that made this point. I am not going to ignore its efforts. I intend to take a long hard look to see which of my own self-concepts stand in the way of happiness.
Besides the profound message I took from this book, I also found it a wonderful read. The characters alone make it one of the best books I have read in a while. I felt myself drawn into their hopes and fears. I loved the setting too -- Greece with a view onto the Mediterranean. Which by the way, I learned a little about the prevailing attitudes and customs that led to the financial meltdown of Greece's economy. Just another reason I love this book. Where can I find more like it?
The author more than adequately uses current events to illustrate the human condition in a way that is not only entertaining, it’s philosophically artistic. Danny, the unlikely illegal immigrant, has fled to Greece to escape his past and an integral part of himself. Instead, he meets the meaning of life. Two typical refugees and a native, through a series of eye opening events, show him the obvious, the knowledge that he has been refusing to accept, the apognosis. My heart reached out and cried with Danny, Sophia, Yasim, and Nasir, and at times, I wanted to reach into the pages and shake them because I cared. The characterization and plot were Dostoyevsky-esque. Man against all—the past, the present, the future, the world, and most importantly, himself. Danny and Sophia’s relationship was believable, relatable, and addictive. I have definitely had the same arguments running broken-record style within my own brain. Everyone, including myself, has done something that we’ve loathed and had to come to terms with, or run. Some of us more than others. A beautifully written piece of contemporary literature.
Too pretentious for my liking. I have never been exposed to life of illegal immigrants in Europe, but the story from the book is kinda melodramatic. Even with Russian gangsters being pathetically Russian, mind bugging love story and so forth.
Beautifully written with precise word choice and apt descriptions. Emotions are precisely delineated without excess verbiage. Unusual plot with a good ending but enough twists and turns to keep the reader absorbed to the end.
On the surface this seems to be a love story ("all stories are love stories", someone once said). But there are many more things going on in this novel, from a commentary on ethnic and gender identity, to fate and destiny ("the two are one and the same, right?" the protagonist unconvincingly says at some point).
There is a strong sense of place in the novel, as the city of Athens is portrayed in remarkably vivid ways. But not all descriptions are beautiful - just like not all characters are likeable. This underlines the realism and humanity of the storyline, though sometimes it also becomes quite dark if you start thinking about it for too long. Frankly, it reminded me of Lionel Shriver's characters frustrating and flawed, yet brilliantly so.
In Chris Angelis’s Apognosis, we meet Danny, an American eking out a meager living as an illegal immigrant Athens. Unlike Kurt Vonnegut’s Billy Pilgrim, Danny seems stuck in the present. Future prospects seem nil and his past yields up haunting, painful memories. It’s a present-day “lost generation" as he shares an apartment with two illegals trying to make their way to Germany. Danny’s simmering outrage “place[s] an enormous strain on his innate apathy...” such as when his girlfriend, Sophia, is being harassed by her boss.
As Part One concludes, the narrator ponders the flaw in accepting Fate as the arbiter of life’s outcomes. While Danny feels past is prologue, Sophia presses him on his past asserting “I’ve come to realize without dealing with it, you won’t think about the future.” We get more insight as Danny tells a story to one of his roommates, Yasir, a staunch believer in fate (kismet). Back in the states Danny suffered the traumatic loss of a woman he loved very much. This certainly explains his reticence with Sophia, He simply refuses to be hurt again. His ocean crossing has indeed been one of despair.
Danny realizes that we can never escape the past. “it breathes with you, it feeds off you, it lives because of you.” At the outset, Danny seems little more than a detached member of a modern lost generation, getting by on hustling, but by Chapter 6 we see a committed altruistic side. It calls to mind Morris Berman’s “monastic option” from The Twilight of American Culture. At the point in the evolution of a civilization where collapse of empire is imminent, all we can do is carve out a little space and do something meaningful.
“Danny attempted to make sense of his condition. But, just perhaps, that was his error all along; to assume there was anything particularly his about all that he considered his life. Was his life not typical of all lives, of all stories, of all mundane paths people considered unique.” “In the greater scheme of things, all lives were about loss--or the struggle to avoid it....”
“The only way to lose nothing was to have nothing, that was the only reality available to him.” This is why he keeps Sophia at arm’s length, because he fears loss and abandonment, essentially a defense mechanism for self-preservation. Much later a friend provides a precise definition of apognosis “In its truest ancient Greek, it means to voluntarily abandon knowledge...to shut yourself off.”
Near the end of Part 2, a tragedy unfolds and the causation is clear but the chain of events is absurd, leading one to conclude that the universe is at best indifferent and possibly even malevolent. If Danny and his friends had not gone for the knapsack....
After Part 2, there is a very brief transitional chapter (0) which is key to understanding the novel and Danny. Because of his earlier loss and experiences he believes himself emotionally broken. To some degree we have all been there one time or another.
In a flashback as Danny is about to embark as a stowaway to Greece he knows “although you can try to run away from ghosts, you really can’t. They’re always with you, because they live inside you.” The ship’s captain has an interesting take “There is a hidden charm in punishing yourself...When life has thrown you enough woes, you begin to embrace them, so that you can’t be surprised anymore.”
Will Danny emerge from the slough of despair? The author keeps the reader in suspense. Whether Danny succeeds or not, whether or not the denouement satisfies the audience depends on the temperament of the reader. We may disagree, but as a narrative of deep self-examination, the writing is first-rate. Danny is by turns likable and unlikable, and thus a character of real-life complexity.
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